JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com
Winter wheat is harvested just west of the town of Nunn on Weld County Roads 96 & 29 last season. Currently we are receiving just enough moisture that this seasons harvest should be normal.

JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com
Winter wheat grows in a field south east of Platteville this year. We have received just the right amount of moisture so far this year to not effect the winter wheat crop.

Related Media

Winter wheat growers’ dependency on moisture is minimal compared to much of the agriculture industry.­

But now, even they’re asking the clouds be more generous.

“So far, it seems like we just keep getting bar ely enough to keep the crop going until the next storm eventually comes through,” said Curt Wirth, a New Raymer-area farmer, referring to the roughly four inches of snow that fell on his northeast Weld County fields last week.

Before that storm, Wirth’s crop had gone more than a month without any precipitation, he said.

“We keep pushing it,” he added. “I’d rather not cut it this close.”

Wirth’s comments were echoed this week by winter wheat farmers from across the region.

Basically, everything’s fine for now, thanks to some timely rain and snow, they said. While winter wheat is in its dormancy, like it is now, it doesn’t require a great deal of precipitation.

Another round of snow and rain won’t be desperately needed until late February or early March — when the wheat crop comes out of its dormancy, said Wirth, and Bruce Bosley, a crop systems specialist with Colorado State University Extension, who serves all of northeast Colorado.

“It really is a drought-tolerant crop ... and that’s a good thing for us right now,” said Bosley, while also noting that more precipitation will be needed in about two or three weeks, when the weather warms, and so too does the soil and the wheat crop. “Bottom line, though, we’re going to need some moisture pretty soon.”

Already a drought-tolerant and forgiving crop, winter wheat — planted in the fall and harvested in the summer — is becoming more durable in dry times, thanks to researchers, like Scott Haley, a plant-breeding and genetics researcher at CSU, whose research program focuses on varieties that withstand drought and other environmental stresses.

The way it’s looking, this year’s winter wheat crop is going to need all the help it can get.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Drought Monitor, northern Colorado is in “severe drought,” while all of eastern Colorado is suffering “extreme” or “exceptional drought.”

At the Colorado Farm Show in Greeley last week, Colorado State Climatologist Nolan Doesken said long-term forecasts call for abnormally dry and warm weather into the spring for the state.

Additionally, all of Kansas — the No. 1 winter wheat producer in the U.S. — also is experiencing severe drought, or worse.

The ongoing drought, which scorched crops throughout 2012, is expected to have an impact on the roughly $27 billion U.S. wheat market.

U.S. wheat prices could continue to climb, after spending the last five months of 2012 above $8 per bushel.

Wheat prices had been under $7 as recently as June, according to USDA statistics.

Challenging weather is nothing new to Colorado’s winter wheat farmers — most of who, unlike growers of more moisture-dependant crops, don’t irrigate their fields.

The state’s farmers averaged yields of 45.5 bushels per acre in 2010, setting a record high.

But then a dry start to 2011 had farmers worried, that is, until timely rains that spring revived the crop enough to produce average yields of about 30-35 bushels per acre when the crop was harvested that summer.

In the spring and summer of 2012, some of the region’s farmers again struggled with drought, while several in Weld County also endured a June hail storm. Yields in the area that summer ranged widely, from 5 bushels an acre to more than 50.

Then this past fall, some farmers were hesitant to plant their winter wheat in dry soil.

Finally, rains came in mid and late September, allowing farmers to plant just before a mid-October deadline, set for crop insurance requirements.

The roller coaster has been too much of a ride for some.

Stan Cass — a Weld County farmer, whose family once planted as many as 2,000 acres of wheat — said he hasn’t planted any wheat the past couple years.

He has instead put many of those acres into the federal government’s Conservation Reserve Program, which encourages farmers to convert erodible cropland or other environmentally sensitive acreage to vegetative cover, such as cultivated or native grasslands, grassed waterways and riparian buffers.

“It’s been tough. I admire the guys still doing it,” Cass said of the wheat growers near him. “A lot of guys around here have somehow managed to produce decent crops the past couple years.